In Defense of PR: View from A Blogger / PR Practitioner
Wednesday, October 3, 2012 at 10:16AM When I was 24 I got my first real PR agency job. The agency was one of the hottest and fastest growing in the San Diego tech sector. We had red walls, a fully stocked refrigerator and "team-building outings." The CEO had her slew of 20-something girls in little business suits, lined up in their cubes pitching, writing and trying to figure out what the hell a 802.11 repeater was.
Let me tell you a little about Public Relations... see, there has always been a misunderstanding of what it really means.
Public Relations is the forward facing communicator for a company, brand or product. This department writes the news of the company and spins it to make it a good story for public consumption. PR professionals are paid to get news to journalists in such a way that a journalist wants to write about it.
But the reality is that for every piece of news, you are lucky if you get one - five publications to cover it. So you constantly build your list of contacts through journalists who write similar stories, cover your client's competitors or look to understand the space you are in. And part of an overall plan is keeping journalists informed on news information and story ideas by "blasting" pitches to lists. Are the lists perfect? Never. Does a PR person try their hardest to keep the lists as clean and relevant as possible? They should.
A common complaint I hear is that the pitch isn't personalized enough. PR people use massive data bases - Cision and Vocus to name a few - to form their lists. These databases have very, very basic information listed about journalists and, more recently, bloggers. Mainly keywords and a snippet from your bio. When a PR person searches through the system to build lists, they will search for general phrases. A shampoo company may search for things like "beauty products" and "reviews" - so if your niche is organic-only products, your name may slip through the cracks and your name added to the list. Why? Because the bio on the database may make you look like the IDEAL CUSTOMER for this shampoo and there is a chance - maybe only a slight one - that you will want to write about their story/brand/product.
And journalists write these articles at no cost to the company/brand/product.
Yes. Journalists write for FREE.
Well, kinda. See, it's the job of the journalist to fill the publication they write for with valuable news and information to get people to buy and subscribe to their publication. In the PR world if you want to pay for content, that's an advertorial, or a straight up ad. Technically, it's considered unethical for traditional journalists to even get gifted with products and services.
Here is where PR people and bloggers don't see eye-to-eye.
Bloggers see it as "I have this amazing platform that I've worked my ass off to get to the point it's at, why would I talk about your product, post pictures of your brand and include links to your sites for free?" To a blogger, it's like Revlon asking Vogue to run it's ads for free.
But honestly, in traditional PR, the company would never think of paying for journalistic coverage at publications like Wall St. Journal or Allure. And there is the tipping point.
So what is a blogger and a PR person to do?
First, we need to keep in mind that both of us are humans, prone to mistakes. How would a blogger feel if a PR person blasted them across social media, or sent an email to 300 PR reps about the professionalism of the blogger? Another thing bloggers need to keep in mind is that today's PR associate is tomorrow's Marketing Manager with a $500,000 blogger relations budget.
Additionally, as the blogosphere is growing and as we bloggers are trying hard to make a dime, many of us will become the brand/product/company. And we all know who the bloggers are we would want to work with... if you are negative and bitching, would you want to work with you based on what you've said on various platforms?
The thing we all need to keep in mind is that daily, our scope is is changing and morphing into something it wasn't yesterday. We all need to figure it out together, to get us all to the point where we think we should be.
But this change isn't going to happen overnight. So we all, Bloggers and PR reps, need to work together until that day comes. And I have a few suggestions for bloggers to ease the frustration.
1) Check and see if you are listed in PR databases. If so, contact them with the information you want noted. If you don't like getting press releases - you can put that in your bio. Make sure the databases have the information YOU want noted.
2) Have a full disclosure sheet and few sentence information about how you work with brands easily found on your website. Figure out for yourself what you will do on a straight publicity front, and what you charge for.
3) NEVER ask for money to review products. Both the integrity of the brand and the blogger are hurt by paid reviews. Obviously you need product to even write a review, but be up-front with the PR person that just because product is sent, they are not guaranteed a review or mention.
4) Be professional. Don't take on everything. It's OK to just delete emails that are not right for you. It's ok to email back and asked to be taken off a list for a brand you don't gel with and most of all - it's ok to just say "No Thanks!"
While I don't want the comments to turn into a bitch session on either side - I would love thoughts from bloggers and PR peeps on this! Did I miss anything? Have you had a great experience you want to share?
PR, Public Relations, bloggers in PR thoughts 
Reader Comments (14)
Thanks for posting! I was struggling with this as both a business owner and blogger. Bloggers say I need to charge, but as a small business I know the power of having good working relationships with other businesses (small and large).
Everything I do is with the intention of helping others and I feel like by only writing about companies who are willing to pay for it, I'm doing a disservice to my readers and to myself.
I don't know that there is a good solution, but I hate the idea that someone's hard work ends up in my trash. I try to respond to every pitch to let them know why it's not a good fit, but it's a challenge, and I find more and more often that I get followup after followup if I don't take time to respond.
As the space evolves relationships will become more and more important, and being polite and professional is the key in my opinion.
In my work life I am a PR professional and on my own time a mommy blogger. I think you explained what PR professionals do perfectly. I spend my day reaching out to journalists - and now with more frequency bloggers - with feature, trend and general story ideas about my company.
Whether a reporter takes the pitch and runs with it depends on a few things, whether it is timely, interesting or truly noteworthy. In my entire professional career, I've never been asked to pay for a story. I did once have a reporter send back to me a company mug that we sent out with our holiday cards, saying he couldn't accept it because of his media outlet's ethics conditions. For every 25 pitches I send out, it's a good rule of thumb to say that only one of them will result in an actual media story or coverage. I do try to make sure that I find the right reporter for any story I place by doing some research first.
So it's interesting for me to be on the other side and get pitches for my blog. I do understand that databases are used, because I do use them, but I am very cautious about sending any type of mass email out. Inevitably you wind up having someone on your list that isn't appropriate or doesn't want to be on it. There is no reason to be rude. All you have to do is say "please remove me from your email list." It's that simple.....
I agree that you should always have some sort of disclosure on your site, stating if you do and how you work with brands.
Again, you have to choice to say yes or no....
Bravo Beth!!!!!! I was wondering if you were going to cover this! Thank you thank you!!! I hate that this poor PR person was so public chastised. I also believe it makes the rest of us bloggers look bad. I also recommend that bloggers not complain on their Facebook about the pitches they get. Though, I'm sure I've been guilty of it once or twice.
You definitely have an advantage to living both sides, Beth, so I'm happy to see you sharing your insight for both audiences. I'm a PR pro who dabbles in blogging, and I'm amazed at the "PR" requests I receive for my photo blog (no, I'm not going to review your new book on dogs). The lack of simple research is astounding. Sharing ways for bloggers to take more power over the situation is great, but I also hope lazy PR pros will just give up and find a new profession.
having worked in PR and marketing and now blogging and marketing and... I thank you for this post. Bloggers, we can't write the rules and bend the rules when they're written in stone. Some of us are, inappropriately, barking up the wrong trees. To be professional we have to act professionally.
... and cliche and cliche and cliche...
Great post! At the end of the day, we are all people and should respect one another. I am a PR pro and myself get pitched from vendors. If I'm not interested, I simply reply that we're going to pass at this time but will let them know if/when we're interested in the future. As a PR pro, I will continue to follow up with media if I don't hear back because the reality is, they may have missed it, especially if they're receiving hundreds of emails/day. If you're not interested, a simple reply of "No thanks!" goes a lot further than you think. If a family member or friend emailed you with a proposal or question, would you ignore it? Probably not. It takes less time to simply reply that you're not interested than it takes to become aggravated by numerous follow-ups. We are sometimes criticized for persistence, but the truth is, editors need us in order to get content for writing! We are here to make your jobs easier :)
FANTASTIC! It's all about understanding each parties goals. I spent six years at a PR firm and then six as a marketing director for a brand --- I experienced just as many bad pitches from bloggers as I received from other brands in my personal email. We still have a long way to go but if we both sides will start by reading this post, I think it will help. Thanks lady!
Thanks everyone - I think the more we both understand each other's world, the easier it will be for all of us!
Great, great post, Beth. As a blogger, I am so guilty of just ignoring a PR pitch that doesn't fit my blog. I need to respond, I know. The responses to this post have made me realize that.
As far as blasting PR pitches on your platforms? Get. Out. Of. Town, with that nonsense. It's one thing to be sharing a bottle of wine with a few blogging friends and laugh about the Christian Toddler DVD pitch for your R rated blog (ahem). But to sit there and complain time and again about PR pros and an email you got from one? Get a life. It's an email. Move on. Don't act like you're God's gift to the blogging world.
I agree. I think no matter which side you come from, or if you come from both sides, it always pays to be professional. I also think it is super important to communicate with each other as well. And, when you finally have the ear of a PR exec, ask them how to make your relationship with them better. Set your own boundaries and be able to clearly identify what will work for you and your business as a blogger, but ask what their goals are in all of this, too. From there, you can decide if your goals align and can be mutually beneficial. It doesn't have to be that hard unless you make it that way. Thanks, Beth!
This is a great post. I agree with you. That being said, I often get the same pitches at my work email account that I get at my personal blog email account. It's funny - I can read them within half an hour of each other and I take them completely differently. As the blogger, I find it super annoying that someone's asking me to post about their sex toy on my personal parenting blog for nothing in return. In my work capacity, I find it amusing that someone is pitching me a sex toy for a parenting site. But seriously, though, I admit that whatever the pitch is - and I'm talking relevant pitches - it strikes me as slightly irritating as a blogger and perfectly normal for my job. So my "takeaway" is that PR reps should try their best to tailor different pitches for bloggers than those they send to journalists and bigger websites.
And then what Monique said: "But to sit there and complain time and again about PR pros and an email you got from one? Get a life. It's an email. Move on. Don't act like you're God's gift to the blogging world." Mostly the last line. Amen, sister.
"Another thing bloggers need to keep in mind is that today's PR associate is tomorrow's Marketing Manager with a $500,000 blogger relations budget." <<-- And yes, that.
Also, your suggestions are great.
Finally, I work with a ton of amazing PR people who are good at their jobs and are a pleasure to interact with. So I'm glad you wrote this. :)
(All over the place! I blame the monkeys.)
Hi, I've got a question for you if you don't mind? I only recently started my blog, but have been contacted by a few PR companies, two of which I was interested to work with, I replied stating my interest, but have not heard back yet? The one has been about 2 weeks now and the other 1 week .. I'm not sure if it's etiquette for me to follow-up? I don't want to step on any toes. Thank you! :)
Totally follow-up with them! You are not stepping on toes at all. Good Luck!